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There
were neon lights all over the scaffolding and
right across from the bar were nine televisions
stacked in threes showing karate movies. It was
a pretty cool club considering we were in Baltimore.
The line was crazy
long, but we walked right in 'cause we had our
shirts on. One of the smartest things I've ever
heard marketing major Mark think of was selling
The Lost T-shirts. The niggas had fucking merchandise.
Over the past two years, most of the young, Black
kids in B-more had one.
They were white shirts with a compass with a broken
face (their symbol) on the front. "The Lost"
was written underneath the face and "Get
Lost!" was on the back.
Since we were all in the cipher, we all got specialized
shirts. Mine was black with the compass over my
chest on the right side on the front and the poem,
"Dreamkeeper" on the back.
space was the only other person to have a black
shirt. He had the compass on the front. Upside
down. And he had stars all over the shirt.
Time had a white
shirt with the compass all over the back and "Time"
written over the right side of his chest like
a nametag.
Mark had a gold
shirt with "Down" written in big letters
on the front and "The Lost" on the back
with a huge compass beneath it.
Truth had a khaki
shirt with the symbol over the right side of her
chest and an upright bass on the back.
Maya had a shirt
covered with flower shaped buttons and the compass
all over the back.
Khalil had a freaky
"Laverne & Shirley" K on a burgundy
shirt on the front and the compass on the back.
Anyway, kid at
the door knows to let us in when he sees the shirts.
When we got in
we immediately went backstage where they were
getting set up. Truth was playing her bass and
humming to no one in particular. Time was walking
back and forth going over his lyrics. space was
playing one of those old hand held football games
that we all got for Christmas when we were thirteen.
Mark was sitting in the corner listening to a
Walkman.
"Yo, yo, we
just wanted to peace y'all up before the show!"
On cue, The Lost
just looked up and smiled. At the same time. They
were in sync.
We left and went back into the club. Maya and
Khalil started to dance. I went and got a mint
Snapple and just chilled. A Lost gig was my favorite
place to be. On the one hand, I was the center
of attention. This was where we ruled. Everyone
who loved the group was in the 'Nig. It was almost
impossible for any of us to leave without some
ass if we wanted it.
On the other hand,
since I wasn't the one performing, I didn't have
that anxiety to worry about. I could just sit
back and enjoy the ambiance.
Gangstarr was spinning and the place had a nice
breezy feel about it. Kids with 'locks and baldies
roamed around trying to kick to sisters with naturals,
'locks, everything. The smell of incense floated
throughout, but a trained nose could also smell
the weed coming from the bathroom. Across from
the bar, about fifteen kids were watching The
Five Deadly Venoms. There were also four spades
games going on at the tables. On the court, there
was a heated game of horse or 21 or some type
of basketball thing going on while about thirty
kids watched. Two other local acts had performed
already and we were all just waiting for Time
and 'em.
As I was sitting,
watching the movie, I saw Stacy and her band of
merry sophomores coming towards me. All of them
had on The Lost T-shirts. Normally I don't like
to talk to Stacy in public, especially when she
is with her friends.
She had absolutely no poker face; anyone who saw
us together immediately knew we were sleeping
together. She was just too fucking giggly. Nice
ass though. And I was in a good mood and it's
not like I could get away from her.
"Hi, Terence."
"Hey, whassup
Stacy?"
"Just here
to get lost! Do you know my friends? This is Melissa,
Nicki and Gail."
"Hi. Nice
to meet y'all."
"Hey, I wanted
to meet you. I've been reading your poems in the
school paper and I really like them," one
of them said.
"Thank you..."
"Nicki."
"Nicki."
"Yeah, your
style reminds me of T.S. Eliot a little bit with
the cut and paste references and all. Have you
ever read his poetry?"
"You like
T.S. Eliot?"
"A little.
I did a paper on "The Hollow Men" last
semester."
"That's kinda
deep...yeah, I do like him. That's one of my favorite
poems as a matter of fact. Do you write?"
"No. I just
like poetry."
Nicki and I talked
for about ten minutes more as the others just
stood around as Stacy fidgeted, obviously uncomfortable
with the conversation. Nicki seemed like a pretty
cool kid. She definitely knew her stuff. She even
made a couple of suggestions about one piece that
I was going to think about.
Once again God
had shown me what I learned when I was twelve.
I knew nothing about women. Just when you think
you got 'em figured, they slip through your fingers
like sand. We probably would have kept talking
except that we noticed the music had stopped.
That meant the band was about to go on.
Stacy grabbed Nicki s arm and said, "C'mon
Nicki, I want to get a spot near the
stage!"
As she was literally
dragged away, she said, "Well it was nice
talking to you, Terence. We'll have to finish
our conversation later."
"Yeah, we
do."
Stacy yelled, "Nicki!"
I smiled at her
and said, "You better go before she has an
aneurysm."
They left and I
sat back. I liked to watch from the back so I
could kind of gauge the audience. Since we are
African peoples, we do the call-and-response thing
so very well. If you don't watch how people react,
you miss half the show.
The stage was completely dark. Suddenly, a spotlight
was shown on the middle of the stage, where Truth's
bass was sitting. People, mostly the guys, began
to cheer. And out of the darkness came the bass
line from "Bitch's Brew".
She looped it and dropped a beat in and after
about a minute, Aunt Ester's voice came in saying,
"The truth, the truth, the truth will set
you free." At this point, a second spotlight
came on over Truth at the turntables. More yells
of approval (including mine.) For three minutes,
Truth scratched while "The truth, the truth,
the truth will set you free," played over
and over again.
Then she pulled
the beat back so that only two bass notes slammed
through the
speakers over and over again. Then she dropped
in the bassline from Dizzy Gillepsie's "Night
in Tunisia."
At this point the
crowd went absolutely ballistic. I mean, kids
lost their minds! They knew that The Lost were
about to perform their signature song, "Get
Lost!"
Out of nowhere, Truth dropped in the beat, the
stage was flooded with blue light and Time, space
and Down (I gave Mark his props and called him
his other name. He was up there doing it.) came
jumping out of the back yelling, "Get lost,
kid, get lost! And everybody was screaming and
brothers were jumping and girls were yelling and
when the crowd was worked into a frenzy, Down
jumped forward and did his part.
He was more old school than either of the other
two. His lyrics rhymed but that was about it.
They were simplistic and rigid. On the other hand,
his flow was easy to follow and he got the crowd
worked up. Down also had more call and response
than Time or space; at one point he called out,
"whose house?" and the entire front
row of girls responded, "Down's house!"
I had to give him
props, the effect was kinda phat. As Down finished
his part and went over on the side of the stage
with his groupies, space stepped up and gave us
a peek into his personal madness.
Now, surprise, surprise, space's rhymes were intricate
and bewildering. He stuttered, paused and flowed
off beat and on at will. The other thing is, no
one really knew what he was talking about. I kinda
got the feeling he wasn't talking to any of us
anyway. I don't even want to think about who he
was talking to.
space has a small following too, but it's very
small. Mostly, people were waiting for space to
finish so we could get to the main event.
At this point,
Truth pulled the beat out so that the bassline
stood by itself.
And it was still.
All of the 'heads
moved close to the stage. Then Time very slowly
worked to the center of the stage as the storm
of events swirled around him. He was totally in
control. He was Chango. He was John Henry. He
was Shaft. Time, the undisputed leader of The
Lost, was in his kingdom.
He grabbed the
mic like a lifeline and released a maelstrom from
his mouth.
With his words, he held us in place. Through sheer
force of will, Time controlled the room and made
us do his bidding. We nodded our heads to his
every word, like his mouth was a drum. When he
swayed his hand back and forth, we followed it
like robots. Time washed over us and we belonged
to him. When Time was finished, Mark and space
came forward and started yelling, "Get lost!
Get lost!" (And nobody noticed that Truth
had moved over to her bass.) And after the record
ran out, Truth began to play the bassline on the
bass. Then she started to change it up and improvise.
Mark and space backed up and Time stood right
next to Truth and nodded his head to the beat
as if he was in a trance. Then Time did what all
the true hip-hop heads had come to hear him to.
He freestyled. For five glorious minutes, Time
freestyled and everyone believed The Lost could
get a contract. They could be big. Real big.
The show continued
and The Lost rocked the house as usual. After
the set, everyone was just chillin' in the club
enjoying the atmosphere. Looking around at all
the baldies and the dreads and the fades and the
twists; looking at the baggy jeans and the sweat
shirts and the Tims' and the sneakers; looking
at the browns and the blacks and the yellows and
the blue-blacks and the creams; looking at my
beautiful, beautiful, beautiful Black people,
all I could think was there's nothing better than
being Black on Saturday night.
And in the middle
of my I-love-my-people moment, up walks Jodie.
She always walked up on you like she was up to
something. She had on a plaid shirt, tied in a
knot so her stomach was out, cutoffs and boots.
Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail and she
looked me in the face but not in my eye. I almost
forgot why I even dealt with her triflin' ass
until I looked at her smooth, caramel legs. Then
I remembered.
"Hi, Terence."
"Hello, Jodie."
"Nice show,
huh?"
"It
was phat, it was phat. So what's up with you,
Jojo?"
"I don't know
yet. I wanted to talk to you and see what you
were doing."
"Well, I haven't
marked anything down on my agenda yet but when
I do I'll let you know."
Jodie gave me a
crazy look like she knew I had played a joke on
her, but she couldn't quite catch it. I didn't
want her to burn her brain cells out so I said,
"I tell you what. I'll page you later. And
she walked away.
God, I couldn't
believe her ass. She had the nerve to step to
me about some sex with Mark in the same place.
Yeah, things were going to have to change, I was
going to have to-
"Nice poem."
Okay. Since I was
13, my hearing had been so sensitive that no one
ever sneaks up on me. Ever. When I was a kid,
my mom used to pluck my ears for sitting with
my back toward the door. She taught me that it
was incredibly dangerous to give someone an opportunity
to sneak up on you. And no one had until that
second. When I turned around I saw this girl.
This woman. This beautiful, beautiful woman.
She...she was about 5'6 and a deep, earthy color.
She had on a long green linen skirt and a black
T-shirt.
She wore an emerald
and silver choker around her neck with matching
earrings. Her hair was in a natural, about an
inch away from her skull. Her eyes were dark and
piercing. Looking in her eyes was like looking
at Truth's.
Looking in her
eyes was like looking at truth. And her eyes were
on me. I stood, motionless, in this presence of
this angel and said the only thing a sensitive
artist such as myself could say in a situation
like this.
"Huh?"
"The poem.
On the back of your shirt. I like it."
"Oh yeah!
That's Langston Hughes. He wrote it."
"I know. I've
read it before. And it says so on the back."
At this point,
I'm thinking 'Okay Hurston. Let's take it down
and get in control. You're the Dreamkeeper. Stop
acting like a kid.'
"Right. I'm
Terence. Terence Hurston. Who you-"
"I know who
you are. I like your earrings too. They're cool."
Now I had been
here before. "Yeah, I call them my 'Yoricks,"
like in Hamlet. Alas poor Yorick, I knew him well."
"Actually,
the quote is, Alas poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio,
a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy."
Then she smiled and continued and finished the
whole soliloquy. And then she smiled again.
Hokay. Okayboyokay.
This was not good. This was definitely not good.
I meet someone I could like and I decide to become
Spaz Boy.
"Well, uh,
how did you know my name?"
"I've read
your stuff. I like some of it."
Some of it.
"Right. Well
maybe we can get together and talk about it...I
don't think I caught your name."
She smirked and
said, "That's probably because I didn't throw
it."
"Well, maybe
you could throw-"
Suddenly people started running everywhere and
the place erupted into chaos.
Apparently, someone was fighting on the dance
floor. As people ran by me and the-girl-in-green,
I noticed that Onyx was playing.
I always knew introducing
slamdancing to people who wore $145 sneakers wasn't
a good idea. Anyway, things were falling apart
all around me and all I could think about was
seeing her again.
"Look, how
can I get in touch with you?"
She smiled (damn,
that smile again) and said, "I'll call you."
Before I could
ask her how she knew my number, this fine golden
girl ran up and grabbed her and said, "C'mon,
Zora! Let's get out of here!"
At the time, I
didn't really pick up the Rod Serling quality
of the two. All I could do is catch her looking
at me as I mouthed "Zora.
Now it was my turn
to smile.
I don't know how
long I stood there after she left. I don't really
remember a passage of time per se. The first thing
I remember was Mark going, "Terry, what are
you doing?"
"....Hmmm.
Oh, what's up Mark?"
"`What's up?'
Nigga, mutha fuckas are wilin' up in here. C'mon,
let's get out of here. Everybody was lookin' for
you."
"Okay...no
problem."
"Yo! Who was
that hooker you were talking to?"
"She wasn't
a hooker, Mark. She...I don't know. Mark, be careful
what you ask for. Sometimes you get it."
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